Sunday, November 04, 2012

Spot the International Space Station from your Home

As you know NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) is an orbiting Laboratory that combines the scientific and engineering talent of 16 nations to maintain the largest human outpost in Space. Its is the largest object built outside the planet Earth.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a unique spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. It is the largest and longest inhabited object ever to orbit the Earth. There has been uninterrupted human presence on the space station since 2000. The ISS is an amazing feat of technology that allows humans to explore, live in, and perform science in space.

Did you know you can see the International Space Station from your house with your bare eyes? As the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon, the space station is easy to see if you know where and when to look for it.

To celebrate the 12th anniversary of crews living and working aboard the station, its starting a new service-NASA’s Spot the Station service. This service sends you an email or text message a few hours before the space station passes over your house. The space station looks like a fast-moving plane in the sky, though one with people living and working aboard it more than 200 miles above the ground. It is best viewed on clear nights.

Spot the Station is available worldwide to anyone with an email account or SMS-enabled phone. Several times a week, Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, determines sighting opportunities for 4,600 locations worldwide. If your specific city or town isn’t listed, pick one that is fairly close to you. The space station is visible for a long distance around each of the listed locations.

This service will only notify you of “good” sighting opportunities - that is, sightings that are high enough in the sky (40 degrees or more) and last long enough to give you the best view of the orbiting laboratory.